


Fleiri ok Fleiri

by alice_pike



Category: The Hobbit (2012)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-30
Updated: 2013-01-30
Packaged: 2017-11-27 14:23:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/663008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alice_pike/pseuds/alice_pike
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He wonders if he will forget, in time—if the razor-sharp cries inside his head will dull, if he will confuse his own memories with the images of their songs, if what is real and painful will fade and let him heal.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>(Some part of him is afraid that he will).</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fleiri ok Fleiri

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [hobbit_kink](http://hobbit-kink.livejournal.com) for [this prompt](http://hobbit-kink.livejournal.com/3138.html?thread=4928066#t4928066): Basically, one of the Company comparing his own memories of Kili's death to songs about Five Armies.
> 
> Implied Fili/Kili, but could be read as gen.

He doesn't even realize he's doing it, at first, but of course he is committing to memory every lay and dirge written about the battle for Dale—the Battle of Five Armies, as he refers to it in his own compositions. 

His people know about loss, know all too well how victory on a battlefield can be more devastating than defeat. Songs came slowly for that battle, if they came at all. Songs about vengeance and fealty, courage and bravery; songs about fire, and smoke, and death beyond reckoning. Five Armies was not that battle, though, however personal their losses were this time around, and the songs written about it are uplifting, heroic, befitting the start of a new age of prosperity, won with relatively little blood. 

So Ori listens, and learns, and also doesn't realize at first that he is comparing the songs to his own memories, matching them up with his own version of events. He is too young to have fought in any real battles before this one, his first, (he can only hope his last), but eventually he starts to wonder if this is what happens, after—if this is customary, if this is _the point_ , that the swelling voices of whoever remains drown out the cries of the dead, erase the despair of the dying, so that all that is left in the collective memory of their people is the valor of their ancestors, their family, their friends. 

He wonders if he will forget, in time—if the razor-sharp cries inside his head will dull, if he will confuse his own memories with the images of their songs, if what is real and painful will fade and let him heal.

(Some part of him is afraid that he will). 

He doesn't write about the Company, not at first. It is still too soon, his loss still too immediate; but the heirs of Durin gave their lives for their people, for this mountain, for their _home_ , and they are celebrated accordingly. Ori listens without letting himself really hear because they are _wrong,_ because that is _not what happened;_ and the anger and the hurt still overwhelm him, and he is still afraid that he will _forget,_ that the horrors of this battle will be swept under a rug of valor and that they will lose something in the process, lose a part of who they are and of who had to die to get them here. 

Thorin is already a figure of legend, and he is deserving of his legacy a hundred times over, Ori knows that better than anyone. He died a king's death, a venerable horde of foes at his feet, battle-calls on his lips until the very end. The songs fit, for Thorin, and if no one in the centuries to come will know about the way he hummed under his breath when he worked, the steady light in his eyes when he looked at his nephews, his sister, how he'd gently stroke the neck of his pony with the same hands that deadly wielded a sword, then at least his spirit will be remembered.

But.

They sing too of the sons of Dis, Thorin's nephews and heirs who died beside the body of their king. They sing of them as separate people, though, as if their last stands were not connected, and that is the first thing to jar Ori from the lull of his peoples' voices, to contrast this conjured image of them to the chaos of his own memories. Because Fili's screams are still echoing in Ori's head, outpealing the quivering notes of the song, and Ori sees him fall, as clear as day: He crumples to the ground at his brother's feet, the spear meant for Kili protruding from just below his collarbone. The shouts abruptly cease, and it takes Kili a moment to turn because he _couldn't hear him,_ Fili's warnings in vain in the end.

And he will be remembered for his sacrifice, his selflessness; but no one will know about the desperation scrawled across his features as he ran to Kili's back, the look of utter helplessness on his face even as he saved his brother's life, the fear in his eyes as if just realizing what he was leaving behind, the knowledge that Kili would now be alone.

The moments in between are lost—the moments that will haunt Ori's dreams for years to come are not put into any song, but the memory of Kili's cry as he turned, eyes flashing, is still frozen in Ori's spine. It was a wounded, inhuman sound, torn out of Kili's throat from a place deeper than should be disturbed.

(There are so many things that the songs do not say, so many truths that lie half-hidden in their lyrics—a love lost to a legend far too large to sustain it). 

Kili's skill with a bow had always been notable, laudable, and the songs now boast that every arrow in his quiver met its mark with a deadly accuracy rarely seen among dwarves the world over. They sing of the flash of his knife in his hand ( _Fili's knife,_ Ori knows) when his arrows were finally spent, of the growing puddle of gore at his feet; but they say nothing of the tears washing orc blood from his cheeks, the arm he let get broken from carelessness borne of unfathomable grief.

They say nothing of his final breaths, when even the orcs had left him for dead, his hands scrabbling for his brother's body, his head pillowed on his uncle's chest. They say nothing of his last words, gargled pleas for Fili, for Thorin, for _Dis_ —for anyone left that he loved, his voice broken from fear and the crushing weight of his own solitude. 

They say that he died like a hero, and he did—they _both did_ —but the tragedy of it is lost, Ori thinks—their ages noted but for the wrong reasons, the courage they displayed in their final moments revered rather than the necessity for it mourned.

It takes Ori years and years to write about them, to tell of his own experiences, doesn't start until he's sat at his desk in Moria.

His memories die with him.

The songs do not change.


End file.
